Developer Digitial Illusions today announced that a Macintosh version of Battlefield 1942 will be ported, published, and distributed by Aspyr Media. Aspyr will be publishing Battlefield 1942 and the Road to Rome expansion pack together as a bundle. An official announcement from Aspyr is due later today.

Here's more from the Digital Illusions press release:

Aspyr has a profitable history of publishing great games on Macintosh, and we hope the success of Battlefield allows us to bring even more games to the platform, said Patrick Söderlund, CEO of Digital Illusions.

Battlefield 1942 and Road to Rome for Macintosh will be sold together at full price for approximately 50 USD. The launched is planned to the second quarter of 2004.

IMG has posted a special first look preview of the game that includes some in-game movies from Battlefield 1942, The Road To Rome expansion pack, and the wildly popular BF 1942 mod, Desert Combat. Be sure to check it out by following the link below.

Update: As expected, Aspyr has officially announced the Mac version. Here are the preliminary system requirements:

Multiplayer Requirements:• Internet and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported• Internet play requires a 56Kbps or faster connection

Aspyr has also sent along a few screenshots from the Mac version of the game. To check them out, please follow the links below.

And finally, the IMG Store has begun taking pre-orders for Battlefield 1942: Deluxe Edition. It is available for $48.99. If you are a MacGames DVD Subscriber or IMG Pro subscriber, you can pre-order it at a discount for $44.99.

To celebrate the announcement of Battlefield 1942, Aspyr and Inside Mac Games are teaming up for a very special giveaway. Three lucky winners will win a free copy of Battlefield 1942: Deluxe Edition, when it is released in the 2nd Quarter of this year.

To enter the giveaway, please follow the link below. Winners will be announced on April 2st (changed from the 1st to the 2nd because some people thought it was an April fools joke). Good luck!

As reported earlier, Epic has been showing off the current build of their UnrealEngine3 at the Game Developers Conference currently being held in San Jose, CA. GameSpot got a chance to check out the presentation behind closed doors and has posted impressions of what was seen.

The focus of the demo centers around a cathedral. Besides the usual upgrades to lighting and shadows, a bump in texture detail was also noted:

In fact, the engine does a lot of amazing work with textures. We saw an incredible dragon-like creature, built out of millions of polygons. But even more impressively, you could see the veins and the cracks in its skin to an incredible degree. The textures are so good in fact that it allows Epic to scale down the number of polygons in each creature to create a normal-mapped model with a much more reasonable number of polygons, but losing virtually none of the overall graphical effect.

Also commented on is the developer-friendly toolset, which will allow for drag-and-drop texturing as well as manipulation of the physics of specific objects.

As far as performance goes, GameSpot notes that the demo was running on a 2Ghz AMD CPU on both next generation Nvidia and ATI hardware, and still struggled in a few places.

Apple has posted a feature that takes a closer look at The Omega Stone. Ported to the Mac by TransGaming Technologies, this title is the sequel to Riddle of the Sphinx and boasts an exploration interface made famous by the Myst series.

One of The Omega Stone's features is that it provides both graphically and historically accurate regions to be explored, including Stonehenge, The Devil's Triangle, and Easter Island.

All the environments in the game were modeled after the real ones down to the texture of the stones and such environmental effects as rain and sun. Many of the locations also contain scholarly archeological texts that reveal not only interesting facts but also vital clues.

As promised after the release of Nanousaur 2, Brian Greenstone at Pangea Software has now released an update to Bugdom 2 that adds support for 3D glasses just like he did with Otto Matic last week. The patch is free for all with a full copy of the game and is available for download at Macgamefiles.com.

Bugdom 2 is available from the IMG Store for $34. On related news, the IMG Store just got Nanosaur 2 in stock. Head over there to get your daily need of dinosaurs and grasshoppers filled.

The folks at Danlab Games have released an impressive new shareware 3D mini-golf title called Islands Mini-Golf. Set in the tropics, the game features three differently themed courses and a free 9-hole demo out of the total 54-hole game.

Those anxiously waiting for the Mac release of Epic's immensely popular Unreal Tournament 2004 may want to check out BeyondUnreal's recently published interview with Psyionix Studios. In this exclusive Q&A session, Psyionix's Dave Hagewood gives the low-down on the company's involvement with the game's new Onslaught mode, detailing everything from early concepts of the game to future plans for the company. Here's an excerpt from the article:

BU: How was Onslaught originally conceived/What inspired Psyonix to create Onslaught? Was it designed as a stand-alone game?

I loved the energy and fast paced action of UT and UT2003, but I couldn’t help thinking the game could become even better with the addition of vehicles. We had just completed a demo of Vampire Hunter that we were promoting to publishers, so we decided to add a couple of vehicles to UT2003 and see where it went. I didn’t start out with any preconceived notions about whether we were creating a simple mod or a total conversion or a stand-alone game. I really believe that made a difference because we were just focused on making it fun. The idea was that if we could make it an absolute blast to play, it would end up defining itself. I’m very pleased to say that is exactly what happened.

After just a few weeks of development we started to realize how much potential it had and that was when we officially put the Vampire Hunter project on hold. After a couple of months we had a playable version with prototypes of all the vehicles (two wheeled vehicles, the manta, the raptor, the tank, and the bomber). I remember getting really excited by how much fun it was becoming.

Unreal Tournament 2004 for Mac is expected to ship sometime late this month. To guarantee a copy, you can pre-order the game at the IMG Store for only $39.95. As a special incentive, Mac Games CD/DVD and IMG Pro Subscribers can purchase the game for only $37.95. Until then, be sure to check out the interview at BeyondUnreal for more details.
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